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Old Town
Though rarely a topic of casual or scholastic conversation, Paradise City was not the first attempt by the survivors of Telo-Haljr to rebuild their glorious city. That honor goes to Old Town, the New Halj. Less than a century after the Wars ended, Mr. Cartwright and people who would go on to form the Veteran's Association, along with the remnants of the Earth Federation's military, gathered every survivor they could and made for the west, hoping that there would be fewer horrors laying in wait at the edges of the Alkair Expanse. At first it was a resounding success, construction of the New Halj finished in the early 1200s. Unfortunately it was not a success that would last very long. The New Halj was not built to be a staging grounds for the rebirth of Telo-Haljr, it was merely meant to be a new city where the survivors could thrive. It had few defenses, but using Recuperation Texts it was built with incredible speed. The drawback to thinking less about defensibility and more about aesthetics and comfort would ultimately be the Halj's downfall in the late 1200s, only a few decades after they finished construction. While working on ways to salvage pre-War technologies, the Clouded Eye Legion- a rather large army of Goblinoids- laid siege to the burgeoning city and demanded immediate extradition of all deserters and traitors to the Crown, though which 'Crown' they meant has never been discovered. The Legion's demands were impossible to meet, as the deserters and traitors they called for had all died either during the Wars or in previous decades. Aggravated but not deterred, the Legion demanded that any descendants of the persons they hunted be brought forth to answer for the crimes of their forebears. It was clear from the beginning that there would be no appeasing the Legion; there was no way to meet their demands, and the lists the Legion provided was over ten thousand persons long- they expected an even larger number of sacrifices in lieu of their actual targets. In an effort to delay the inevitable bloodbath from failing to sate impossible demands, Mr. Cartwright parlayed with the Legion and requested time; they had no genealogical recording facilities yet, it would take time to determine who was who. Faced with this information, the Legion changed its demands- they would leave and be satisfied if the Haljrans gave up roughly a two and a half hundred thousand people for immediate and summary execution. Such a demand was obviously ludicrous to the Haljrans, but the Legion didn't agree- Cartwright requested a week to gather so many. The Legion agreed, and retreated to their siege lines. Cartwright's request for a week was, as one might guess, a ruse: he had no intention of sacrificing so many, he intended to evacuate them to Receitva, which was behind some very sturdy borderwalls that could be used to fend off a siege very effectively. They never got the full week, however- the Legion discovered Cartwright's deception and immediately launched an assault, bent on exterminating every living person. Two days after their assault began, the Legion controlled more than half the New Halj, forcing Cartwright and his followers to abandon innumerable thousands of people to the mercies of the rampaging Goblinoids. But hope was not lost when the great wolf Yeaton came through with his hordes of stray beasts, and millions of lives were saved by the noble animals' efforts. Nonetheless, people would not reenter the New Haljr for centuries after the fact, not until the late 1500s, when Paradise City was built up and stable enough for them to dare venture past the borderwalls. Several dozen teams of Freelancers, working with a few key members of the Enforcer's Guild, braved the unknown and began working their way through the New Halj, which by this point had become known as Old Town. Only three individuals managed to survive the journey, reporting that while the town looked clean, orderly, and pristine, it was haunted beyond reason. The only safe places were a mile from the borderwalls, where Yeaton fought the Clouded Eyes; once a person got past that zone, though, every single building was haunted by various kinds of poltergeists, shadows, zombies, ghasts, and other forms of hostile and often vengeful undead creatures and spirits which tend to prey on the living. Worse still, many of these apparitions and shamblers only stayed indoors during the day; at night they would flood the streets in search of those who had abandoned and victimized them, or any unlucky fool who they could vent their rage on. But they never went past a certain point, the battlefield where the animals and goblinoids fought, they avoided it like a plague. Today, Old Town is well sealed off from the rest of Paradise City, acting as a natural barrier between the most heavily infested sectors of Terria and the City proper; as well as providing a convenient tool for Cartwright to force the various factions in the City to obey, stressing the need for unity regardless of their power struggles. The Exclusion Zone- the area where Old Town's hauntings do not enter- has become a forward operating base for the Guild to monitor the region, as well as providing a safe place for Freelancer excursions to begin and end. Despite the inherent dangers, it is known that there are all sorts of valuable treasures to be found in Old Town if one can survive- magical equipment, high tech goods, lost Recuperation Texts, construction materials, all sorts of stuff which could be useful to someone who manages to get their hands on them. Most of the major and minor factions, including the Reclamators, regularly try to hire Freelancers- especially divine casters- to brave the streets and put the enraged dead to rest, hoping to create additional safe zones so that they can loot the town of its treasures. So far, only a few blocks have successfully been cleansed and established as being under the City's control. The only safe way to approach the town past the Exclusion Zone is during the day, as once night falls the dead have a tendency to overwhelm intruders and add their corpses to their own ranks. Back to Paradise City Back to Main Page